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10 things from previous games that should come back

The following is a list of things that have gone from previous CIVs but they all added spice to the game that I wish would come back, risk v reward systems are far more fun and exciting than the blanket boring restrictions in some areas of the game - liven the game up again developers! (sorry for long rant but read if you wish):

1 - First to navigate the globe gets +1 Naval movement. This used to be a fun challenge with a useful reward, sending off a boat ASAP to scout the world, trying to find your way right round first. Think it came in in 3/4 but no need to get rid of it. Im sure there were similar land based challenges that add great value for small outlay.

2 - Early boats were able to get to the open seas. In Civ 1 & 2 (cant remember if 3 or 4 removed this) but the very first boats were not restricted in how deep water they could go rather once you entered the ocean each turn you only had a 25% chance of survival. What this did was to allow you to chance your arm at early exploration at your own risk and sometimes you would make it to the island that would then allow you to explore further. It was a slight chance but it was yours to take and was quite fun.

4 - Tech trading - Theres always talk of 'balance' in game mechanics but I find rather than slow the leaders, let those lagging behind do some catch up via trade. Any 2 wishing to swap Tech is their choice you dont give away the shiny new techs. I remember sometimes needing to catch up and finding other civs behind willing to swap was great but also rejecting anyone wanting my new stealth technology!

5 - Wonders that were grand - The wonders in the last few iterations have been pretty bland. Quantity of quality (especially the version with all the nation wonders with world wonders, to many with not enough value).
In civ2ish I recall the pyramids was an early wonder that would provide a granary in every city, adam smith trading co would provide huge gold, leonardos work shop would provide free upgrades to all units - things that were game changers if you could get them. Again risk v reward, you want to spend 40 turns building it and potentially missing out or sneak in and get it done first and gain the reward. Much better than building something with great effect than something that offers 1/2 culture per turn! Its a bit like modern society, remove all contest so nobody loses!

6 - Spies as units - A spy as a unit could be used to investigate the map and enemy cities. You can see troop locations, city specifics but were visible to other spies who could then get rid of you. Maybe integrate the turn based system of Civ 6 by moving them into a city to do missions but the surveillance aspect of troops, cities etc is currently gone and needs to come back.

7 - Unit gold from deleting - What a panic in the first patch, simply scale back to ludicrous sums not get rid of it all together.

8 - CIVIL WAR! - I miss this one so much. Another great early Civ counter to a large empire. If someone is huge (not sure of the size that would invoke this but it was only very large empires) then you attack the capital and if you can take it it splits the nation in 2. Was such a great system. Naturally was hard to capture a captial buried deep but it is meant to be a challenge. What a great mechanic that disappeared in I think Civ 3.

9 - The space race landing - In Civ 1&2 you did not win the space race by launching you won by landing on Alpha Century and the time it took to get there was subjective to how much power you build to your space ship (more power longer build time). The purpose of this was that once you launched it was announced to the world and you had a limited time to capture the capital to bring it down and get back in the game. Made for some very exciting and tactical end games, once you got the message someone launched, you either had to make a made dash for the capital and try and bring it down (which would stop the space ship) or launch your own quick enough and hope it was faster to beat them to victory.

10 - The unit stats - Used to love looking at how many units I had lost, built and same for my enemies. Would be great if this came back and was expanded to group into overall, specific wars and such. Little things but added great interest to me.

1 - Yep, that was nice. It was also in CivV, but extremely buged AFAIK.
2 - I don't really mind this. I'm not sure I would take the risk In fact, knowing myself, I probably would cheat this by loading. So, i vote no for this.
3 - Why not. I don't miss it, but could be nice. But if would probably be not usefull most of the time, given by the broken diplomacy.
4 - same as 3
5 - Wonders in Civ6 are complicated to build (require specific tiles, you have to sacrifice the tile while it could be usefull for something else, you get nothing when somebody builds it faster) and have so small effects that you mostly ignore them. So yes, I agree with you.
6 - Hm, I don't want spies as units. That sounds like another layer on the current Civ6 religious units. Spies would also move on the tiles, could fight with each other. No, thanks.
7 - Yep. Civ6 after release was broken in this. But this fix was too much.
8 - I don't remember this, so I don't know.
9 - I think you have enough warning that some enemy is close to the space race victory. I wouldn't complicate it any further.
10 - I don't mind this.

11: True huge maps.
12: The option of a map not only connecting East to West but also North to South.
13: Transporter units (instead of embark).
14: Option to exclude city states from the game.
15. Option for vassal states.

I think they took out the map trading because the AI knows the whole map and they do not track how much they actually explore. Tech trading was - in all games I know - a huge area of exploitation because the AI never knew how to deal with it. So I'm fine with it excluded.

Also 25% of a sunken ship isn't a good idea because it supports save scamming a lot.

Circumnavigation to me seems like a perfectly appropriate eureka. Could even combine it if you happen to be playing on a non-round map to basically be "find the edge of the map". Don't need the movement boost, but it at least gives everyone a benefit for navigating the globe.

Maybe tech trading could come in where you don't trade techs, but if you've researched a tech, when you "trade" it to someone else, they gain the eureka for it. Then it at least balances in that you can't simply swap all techs to catch up, but if my neighbour is already proficient about sailing, they can teach me enough to get started even if I haven't built a city on the coast yet.

While one liked boats going to deep water at the time one remembers only ending up doing it when one saw shallow water on the other side. The reward was worth a paltry 25% risk. One is sure it would be this way again so shouts nay to all but 10. They are all great ideas with issues behind them. Loved the stats though.

I'm going to go into some depth on this, and tend to think in game-design terms, so bear with me.
1: A nice idea, but not quite as challenging as you would think, due to units being able to embark. It would probably go to the first civ to get Cartography, unless Norway was playing, in which case they would almost always get it, particularly in multiplayer.
2: This works better in the earlier games, when it takes less turns to cross oceans. With the current world anatomy, most major oceans take 4 or more turns to cross for slower units, which would almost guarantee their loss. You could balance it, in theory, but it's delicate, and anything that, as DocRock mentioned, encourages save scumming is probably better left out.
3: Would be nice to have, but I think I know why they left it out. Firstly, it discourages exploring, particularly in the early game, which strikes me as against some of the game's design principles. Secondly, I suspect that, much like Defensive Pacts and Joint Research, the AI would almost never agree to it, and rarely propose it, as there are few situations where it would not benefit the player more. Kind of odd that they left it out with those two in, but my first point sort of covers that.
4: Again, the AI would probably hate this, and it is extremely exploitable in multiplayer. If two or three players decided to abuse this, they could easily get massively ahead of everyone else.
5: Powerful Wonders are great for single-player, but can easily throw the game balance in multiplayer. The Wonder effects in this game are actually quite potent (never underestimate a free policy slot, or extra builder charge), but none of them are "get this and win" powerful.
6: Interestingly, this can be changed with two lines of code in a mod. Every unit has a property called IgnoreMoves which is false by default; it is set to true for Spies and Spies alone. Change that, and they can move like any other unit, although I don't think they have a base move value. I suspect the reasoning behind this was to focus Spies, which are a very limited resource, less on observation and more on disruption.
7: Yes, this was a brute force fix, and I suspect they will add it back when they have it balanced properly. if not, well, that's what mods are for.
8: For things like this it is good to ask, "is it fun if this happens to me?" While an interesting option against large enemies in single-player, this is almost a guaranteed ragequit in multiplayer. That, and the idea of leaders makes the logic and logistics of this very complicated. Are the rebel cities the same civ? If not, do they get their old civ's special units? Do they get some unique leader, or the Bizarro version of that civ's usual leader? Hard to balance, hard to implement.
9: This I attribute to it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time syndrome. Adding "and then wait X turns" to the end of any victory condition instantly makes it harder to achieve, as you have to be able to hold off another civ winning until that timer runs down. Also, launching a mission that would get there sooner is yet another great way to make people ragequit. One must always avoid designing features that may make people want to stop playing, particularly in multiplayer.
10: As you said, personal taste. They probably cut out some of the more granular details to make the game more accessible, but there may be a deeper reason. If the devs don't add it eventually, there will be a mod for it.
11: The game can actually run some pretty huge maps, as the Yet (not) Another Map Pack has shown. There seems to be a hard limit of 230 by 115 before the game just won't load it, but even far smaller maps would take a very long time to load and process turns on all but the most powerful computers, which is probably why the base ones are the sizes they are.
12: Another easy fix, maps actually can loop north-south if a variable is changed, but the standard map generation wouldn't create any routes, and it wouldn't make any sense for any map with even remotely realistic geography.
13: An important principle of game design is balancing complexity against depth. Generally, you want as much depth with as little complexity as you can manage. While having specific transport units certainly adds complexity, how much depth it adds, if any, varies wildly from game to game, with timescale being the largest factor in my observation. In an RTS, or a faster-paced turn-based game, they add another tactical layer, allowing for attacks from new angles. In a game like Civ, where turns are measured in years, building a transport unit, loading your army in, and unloading them at the end are just more chores; lots of complexity, no depth. It isn't even a hypothetical safer option, as you still need a full escort to protect it, and it's one target instead of, say, seven. To be honest, I suspect the only reason older Civ games used them at all is because putting a unit inside another unit is, from a coding perspective, easier to work out that giving units different ways of moving. Having transport units for planes is justifiable, as all but the most specialized of aircraft have very limited range, and we can hardly justify food and refuling being "part of the unit" in that case. For land units, however, it just adds more needless unit micromanagement.
14: While this seems like an odd thing to exclude, keep in mind that the game is balanced around city-states giving districts bonuses, and several leaders would probably act weird without them. It would be nice to have, but adding it (and balancing a game in general) is harder than most people would think.
15: Being able to make a Civ into your Client State (the term I like to use) would be an awesome feature, particularly in multiplayer, however it would be a nightmare to implement, requiring mountains of new systems to function, as well as lots of checks and balances to ensure it would be hard to abuse in multiplayer. I suspect there will be an expansion that focuses on diplomacy, and I hope it adds this, but until then, it may be beyond the scope of mods.
And there we have it, my full assessment. Please don't hate me for disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to be fair, and maybe teach some people how game design works in the process.

2 - I don't really mind this. I'm not sure I would take the risk In fact, knowing myself, I probably would cheat this by loading. So, i vote no for this.

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The fact that some may cheat by reloading if you loose is not a valid point in my opinion as you may well apply the same to loosing a battle or any other point in the game when things dont go your way. Your not sure you would take the risk, depending on the game neither am I , thats part of the fun and challenge, much better to have options in life than someone else deciding for you!

3 - Why not. I don't miss it, but could be nice. But if would probably be not usefull most of the time, given by the broken diplomacy.
4 - same as 3

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If we were to remove features due to poor Ai there would not be much game left, you may aswell remove war, air units and diplomacy altogether since the Ai is broken on all these issues. Early Civs worked quite fine for map and tech trading IMO.

6 - Hm, I don't want spies as units. That sounds like another layer on the current Civ6 religious units. Spies would also move on the tiles, could fight with each other. No, thanks.

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I understand the point about the religious units, personally id do away with them or rework them rather than compromise spies. In previous Civs, the unit was invisible to anything other than other spies which could then send other units to expel or kill them. I dont mind the current spy mission system but I feel the game really lacks intelligence gathering on enemy cities and troop locations. I had to use religious units to do this which feels kinda silly.

9 - I think you have enough warning that some enemy is close to the space race victory. I wouldn't complicate it any further.

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Im not sure you get enough warning that the game is about to be won via space race, in my last game I lost without a clue what happened (I assume someone built all the space parts, the lack of info after the game certainly gave me nothing). The old system noted the launch and counted down remaining turns til it landed so you knew exactly where you stood and how drastic your actions needed to be (spies, plant nuke, alpine troop was the best hail mary play!)

I think they took out the map trading because the AI knows the whole map and they do not track how much they actually explore. Tech trading was - in all games I know - a huge area of exploitation because the AI never knew how to deal with it. So I'm fine with it excluded.

Also 25% of a sunken ship isn't a good idea because it supports save scamming a lot.

Edit: a big YES to vassals.

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Thanks for your responses, First off agree with vassals! BUt disagree with removing map tradin as the Ai is not good enough, with all the broken elements of the Ai I think its time the developers invested less in sean bean and more in decent Ai. As for the boat point, as above with a previous response if you wish to cheat to win thats entirely your choice but dont remove fun features cause people will reload and ultimately that effects you and you only (plus the amount of time in your life lost to the long load times is on you!!)

Circumnavigation to me seems like a perfectly appropriate eureka. Could even combine it if you happen to be playing on a non-round map to basically be "find the edge of the map". Don't need the movement boost, but it at least gives everyone a benefit for navigating the globe.

Maybe tech trading could come in where you don't trade techs, but if you've researched a tech, when you "trade" it to someone else, they gain the eureka for it. Then it at least balances in that you can't simply swap all techs to catch up, but if my neighbour is already proficient about sailing, they can teach me enough to get started even if I haven't built a city on the coast yet.

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Thanks for your thougts, personally I like the movement bonus as it was a long lasting reward for the challenge and I think there are far to many eurekas as is but would settle for some form of reward that makes it worthwhile and exciting to attempt.

While one liked boats going to deep water at the time one remembers only ending up doing it when one saw shallow water on the other side. The reward was worth a paltry 25% risk. One is sure it would be this way again so shouts nay to all but 10. They are all great ideas with issues behind them. Loved the stats though.

One would like to see underwater cities again though.

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I recall exactly what your saying but I also recall taking some risks in the dark that paid off and others where the shallow water was a 1 island tile that gave me nothing, point is it was fun, had a little risk and a potential reward why take it out rather than let players deem it worth it themselves?

I'm going to go into some depth on this, and tend to think in game-design terms, so bear with me.
1: A nice idea, but not quite as challenging as you would think, due to units being able to embark. It would probably go to the first civ to get Cartography, unless Norway was playing, in which case they would almost always get it, particularly in multiplayer.Yep if you were going for it you would have to hope you were first to the right tech and also that you could actually access the world in a timely manner, sometimes hard sometimes easy but point being a fun challenge that you can opt to take up or not but should have a reward of some scale for it (I personally liked the +1 nav). I am against embarking units anyway so happy for that to go!

2: This works better in the earlier games, when it takes less turns to cross oceans. With the current world anatomy, most major oceans take 4 or more turns to cross for slower units, which would almost guarantee their loss. You could balance it, in theory, but it's delicate, and anything that, as DocRock mentioned, encourages save scumming is probably better left out.

save reloading only ever effects the individual playing the game so I dont see that as a valid point, as mentioned above you can reload after a loss of a unit if you really wish. Free choice for those that are happy to play properly and those who wish to cheat, it is a game for each indivudual to do as they please. The major oceans dont always need to be crossed necessarily sometimes there is another landmass not to far out of reach that you can go and explore, search for goodie huts or settle.

3: Would be nice to have, but I think I know why they left it out. Firstly, it discourages exploring, particularly in the early game, which strikes me as against some of the game's design principles. Secondly, I suspect that, much like Defensive Pacts and Joint Research, the AI would almost never agree to it, and rarely propose it, as there are few situations where it would not benefit the player more. Kind of odd that they left it out with those two in, but my first point sort of covers that.Fair point about exploring, but solve that by adding it in at a certain tech point (along the education and navigation lines in that someone can naviagte and produce a map), early exploring for goodie huts and settler knowledge is still critical but later in the game when you cant get through anyway it is a natural extension of exploring via trade.

4: Again, the AI would probably hate this, and it is extremely exploitable in multiplayer. If two or three players decided to abuse this, they could easily get massively ahead of everyone else.Whilst I personally never felt it ruined the game via Ai when it used to be in I understand your multiplayer point but dont think the core game should be decided based on multiplayer exploits, give MP gaming vast options to turn off certain features in setup and let humans decide how they want to play against each other.

5: Powerful Wonders are great for single-player, but can easily throw the game balance in multiplayer. The Wonder effects in this game are actually quite potent (never underestimate a free policy slot, or extra builder charge), but none of them are "get this and win" powerful.See above for multiplayer concerns, I didnt mean 'get this and win' powerful but 'get this and get a great reward' powerful I always found much more fun than the tame wonders. I also won many games after missing out on my favourite game changers.
6: Interestingly, this can be changed with two lines of code in a mod. Every unit has a property called IgnoreMoves which is false by default; it is set to true for Spies and Spies alone. Change that, and they can move like any other unit, although I don't think they have a base move value. I suspect the reasoning behind this was to focus Spies, which are a very limited resource, less on observation and more on disruption.Interesing, coding is above me but maybe they thought about it at one point. It is the surveillance of spies I find lacking, I wanna look at enemy citys and troop locations if I can breach their defences.
7: Yes, this was a brute force fix, and I suspect they will add it back when they have it balanced properly. if not, well, that's what mods are for.I hope so
8: For things like this it is good to ask, "is it fun if this happens to me?" While an interesting option against large enemies in single-player, this is almost a guaranteed ragequit in multiplayer. That, and the idea of leaders makes the logic and logistics of this very complicated. Are the rebel cities the same civ? If not, do they get their old civ's special units? Do they get some unique leader, or the Bizarro version of that civ's usual leader? Hard to balance, hard to implement.I sort of get your point but I dont find it fun when I loose my hard built cities (well not in Civ6 since I have never lost a city as the Ai doesnt seem to be able to attack) but it shouldnt be out of the game, I would just need to know that once I expand beyond a certain size defence of my capital is of utmost importance. As someone who plays 99% of my time in single player I again feel we are attacking things from different angles, multiplayer is secondary to me to the core single player game. I would suggest again an extensive list of options to turn of features and give players choice.

As for implementation, as per the last game yes the rebel cities for another civ (random civ not in the game can be selected) and use that civs leader and special units, seems simple to implement and I think it was done well in Civ 2.

9: This I attribute to it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time syndrome. Adding "and then wait X turns" to the end of any victory condition instantly makes it harder to achieve, as you have to be able to hold off another civ winning until that timer runs down. Also, launching a mission that would get there sooner is yet another great way to make people ragequit. One must always avoid designing features that may make people want to stop playing, particularly in multiplayer.Again I am coming from the single player view but seems a lot of rage quitting if people dont win or get there way! I dont see why spending more time building a more powerful ship that beats someone that launched earlier in a weaker ship is an issue. Its the decision you need to make and if people choose wrong and rage quit because they lost then I would guess they have major behavioural issues (btw at this point it wouldnt matter if they quit since the game would be over!) I dont know if there was much multiplayer back in Civ2 days but would be interesting how this was handled then. Alternatively, make it a major annoucement that someone is close to victory, as mentioned above I am still not sure who won the space race in the last game I lost since everything just ended with no explanation (may have been some other win but I had no idea victory was close (I could have missed important messages in the overdone message system which clutters each turn with useless info).
10: As you said, personal taste. They probably cut out some of the more granular details to make the game more accessible, but there may be a deeper reason. If the devs don't add it eventually, there will be a mod for it.Having never much used mods sounds like I may need to start!

And there we have it, my full assessment. Please don't hate me for disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to be fair, and maybe teach some people how game design works in the process.Thanks for your time and personally would not hate anybody for disagreeing (especially about a computer game!), appreciate the discussion

I feel like you could implement #4 as tech boosting rather than tech trading and maybe tie it in with research agreements... sign a research agreement and you'll get random boosts to techs your partner has already discovered and vice-versa, plus a boost to newly-researched items or something. Makes it slightly less exploitable that way but still valuable.

I feel like you could implement #4 as tech boosting rather than tech trading and maybe tie it in with research agreements... sign a research agreement and you'll get random boosts to techs your partner has already discovered and vice-versa, plus a boost to newly-researched items or something. Makes it slightly less exploitable that way but still valuable.

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Great Idea and nicely adapted to the modern game, I like the idea of reworking features to fit rather than the idea of 'to hard to get our Ai to figure it out so just get rid of it'!

I feel like this bonus is a bit overpowered and forces mandatory early scouting.

2 - Early boats were able to get to the open seas.

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Adding a bit too much luck into the game for my tastes.

3 - Map trading4 - Tech trading

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I'm really not a fan of trading in civ games at all. Trading is so beneficial that it forces the player constantly check for beneficially trades in order to make the correct play. As a self imposed rule I've banned myself from initiating trades which both makes the game more difficult and less tedious.

5 - Wonders that were grand

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I actually find most of the wonders in civ6 to be pretty well balanced, especially compared to beyond earth.

6 - Spies as units

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Strongly disagree here. Spies as units just creates another hassle of micromanagement. Civ6 does a great job of reducing micro from trade routes and workers compared to other civs and I feel like spies have about the right amount.

7 - Unit gold from deleting - What a panic in the first patch, simply scale back to ludicrous sums not get rid of it all together.

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Maybe some super small amount like 5 gold or something just as an incentive to reduce clutter for the free units. Its just any significant amount of gold leaves open some sort of avenue for an exploit.

8 - CIVIL WAR!

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Not familiar with old system but this seems complicated.

9 - The space race landing

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Somewhat agree here. Building 5 pieces, and only 5 pieces, that are all necessary is kind of bland. Maybe build 3 necessary parts and 1 or 2 optional ones that may have some sort of other bonus that's good for your civ. I feel like building up to 12 is too many though, again just creates too much micromanagement.

I feel like this bonus is a bit overpowered and forces mandatory early scouting.

+1 Movement is overpowered? It is perfectly balanced for the time spent in my opinion and found it worked well in previous Civs, most certainly does not force early scouting its an option for you to decide if its worth it, some strategy - does the map contain lots of water, will navies be significant in this game? No more mandatory than scouting for goodie huts on land. Plus as I said the bonus is +1 movement, nothing mandatory about that bonus.

Adding a bit too much luck into the game for my tastes.

You make your own luck though - risk v reward, again worked great in earlier Civs. Choice is always better than bland restrictions.

I'm really not a fan of trading in civ games at all. Trading is so beneficial that it forces the player constantly check for beneficially trades in order to make the correct play. As a self imposed rule I've banned myself from initiating trades which both makes the game more difficult and less tedious.

Trading is so beneficial throughout human history that how could you not include it in a Civ game! You already have the option of ignoring it - again personal choice, always better!

I actually find most of the wonders in civ6 to be pretty well balanced, especially compared to beyond earth.

Civ 6 isnt as bad as 4 or 5 (cant recall what ever version brought in all the world + national wonders that were so plentiful that everyones a winner!) but they are still not as impressive as the early Civ games that made investing 30 odd turns truly worthwhile.

Strongly disagree here. Spies as units just creates another hassle of micromanagement. Civ6 does a great job of reducing micro from trade routes and workers compared to other civs and I feel like spies have about the right amount.

I disagree that its micro managment as it serves an important surveillance purpose that no units other than religious units offer (not to the full extent and is a workaround to the lack of spy alternative). If having them as a unit is not an option then the mission list needs to expand to include 'reveal troop locations/map for x number of turns' and the original 'investigate city' function performed by the Civ2 spies.

Maybe some super small amount like 5 gold or something just as an incentive to reduce clutter for the free units. Its just any significant amount of gold leaves open some sort of avenue for an exploit.

Agree, nothing significant but some payback - they seemed to panic in the early patch, rather than simply spend 5 minutes thinking of how much to reduce it by they removed it completely!

Not familiar with old system but this seems complicated.

In what way is it complicated? Civ reaches X size then if it looses its captial is split in 2 - exactly as in Civ 1&2. Was a great way to add a vulnerability to large civs (doesnt mean its east to do, a well defended Capital should be hard to capture)

Somewhat agree here. Building 5 pieces, and only 5 pieces, that are all necessary is kind of bland. Maybe build 3 necessary parts and 1 or 2 optional ones that may have some sort of other bonus that's good for your civ. I feel like building up to 12 is too many though, again just creates too much micromanagement.

Sounds a good system - a few core objects and then optional that add strategy to the venture. I personally found that since we are playing a game ultimately, having the countdown to a loss was an exciting way to attempt to stay in the game - capture the capital or launch your own more powerful ship and beat the opposition.

Sure. More stats, charts, and info is actually easy to program too.Off all the suggestions this one rarely gets argued!

I too would love to see this in a modern Civ game. Anyone know if Firaxis would/could actually bring it back? They were such a huge game-changing thing back in Civ 4. You could build hegemonies instead of having to actually eliminate everyone! I know city-states were supposed to kind of make up for losing this, but it's just not the same.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." ~ Commissioner Pravin Lal, U.N. Declaration of Rights

2 - Early boats were able to get to the open seas. In Civ 1 & 2 (cant remember if 3 or 4 removed this) but the very first boats were not restricted in how deep water they could go rather once you entered the ocean each turn you only had a 25% chance of survival. What this did was to allow you to chance your arm at early exploration at your own risk and sometimes you would make it to the island that would then allow you to explore further. It was a slight chance but it was yours to take and was quite fun.

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Yes, we want risk, excitement, drama, fun and reward. No one is forced to risk it.

Also I would suggest that naval units can not heal next to a cliff tile. It is to dangerous to pull the ship to shore.
Also land units can not heal on terrain tiles with snow, swamp and rainforest. It is not relaxing to reside there.